With the city parks department transforming an adjacent lot into
a public square, with a large pond and ten-foot-high boulders, the
windowless former brewery warehouse, that housed the school for 50
years, is now an open and legible program that engages with the
campus and community.

Photo: Tom Arban

The facade has a double-skin glass cladding around the top of
the three-story building that conceals an LED lighting system.
By day, this opaque glass surface provides a seamless white
backdrop to bustling campus life and contrasts the centre's
transparent glazing at ground level.

At night, a dynamic display of multi-colored lights glows in
separate panels or in unison, transforming the building into a work
of art as a programmable and interactive light installation using
an app designed at Ryerson University. An enormous photo
murals marks the entry from the square.

Photo: Tom Arban

Photo: Tom Arban

Photo: Tom Arban

This is a luminous facade for the 21st-Century,
one that's dynamic and colorful, that can be played on with an app
and a smart phone, and is made with light - the stuff of
photography - to engage and represent this institute to the
city./ Donald Schmitt, Principal Diamond Schmitt
Architects

The existing brick surface received new insulation and a smooth
stucco finish to create a monolithic surface to act as a projection
screen for the new lighting system. This core layer of envelope was
then shrouded by a second skin of translucent structural glass
suspended one to five inches away by stainless steel point fittings
on an aluminum framework hung from the existing building's
primary structure.

The glazed ground floor creates a welcoming presence,
transforming the public square where the campus connects with the
city.

Photo: Tom Arban

Photo: Tom Arban

Photo: Tom Arban

Photo: Tom Arban

The mainstay of RIC's inventory, and the impetus to create the
centre, is the Black Star Collection: 292,000 photojournalistic
images amassed by the New York-based Black Star photo agency from
c. 1910 to 1992. The collection was donated anonymously to Ryerson
University.

Besides the main galleries the RIC has additional exhibition
space in the Great Hall, Entrance Colonnade and Student
Gallery.